A New Street Show in NoHo

NoHo, the warehouse district turned arts enclave in Lower Manhattan, continues to sculpt its latest identity as an upscale place to live.

A string of recent boutique residential buildings, including the latest condo to hit the market, the six-unit 22 Bond, has filled longtime gaps in the streetscape while brightening once-dark hulks.

As developers scoop up the last scraps of land in the 20-block neighborhood between Houston Street and Astor Place, there’s a sense that a chapter is ending, according to brokers and builders.

“There just doesn’t seem to be a lot else on the boards right now,” said Scott Shnay, a principal of SK Development, which is part of a team that recently completed 10 Bond Street, an 11-unit luxury condo, and broke ground last month on an office building at the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones Street. “There aren’t a lot of places left to build,” Mr. Shnay added.

But the past hasn’t totally been wiped out, and some traces are highly visible. A mural depicting Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” for instance, graces an exterior wall at 20 Bond Street, near Lafayette Street. Small statues of golden nymphs scale the facade of 24 Bond, where the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had worked.

Image

A rendering of the garden at 22 Bond Street, a condo being developed in NoHo.CreditBLKHaus and Richport Group

Squeezed between them is 22 Bond, which is being codeveloped by the Richport Group and Second Development Services. Extending to Great Jones Street, the 11-story building seems to share its neighbors’ fondness for public art.

Its weathered-steel facade contains a single large sidewalk-level window, which will permanently display a 14-foot-tall sculpture of hundreds of interconnected gold crowns by Roy Nachum, an artist who has a NoHo studio.

Past the stack of crowns, through windows at the back of the display, is another uncommon sight in the city: a plant-filled yard.

Set back from the street, 22 Bond has a 2,500-square-foot private garden in the area between the building’s front door and its elevator banks. On warm days, residents can thread through the greenery on a stone path, though there’s also an adjacent glass-walled hallway for when it rains.

In some ways, the developers of 22 Bond were stuck with their design. When they acquired the site in 2013 from a bank, it contained a half-built hotel whose 14 stories had been a ghostly presence since the recession.

With the creation of three landmark sections in NoHo between 1999 and 2008, city officials decided they wanted a building that would fit in better than the previously approved hotel, which forced Richport to lop off three stories, said Husein I. Sonara, a Richport co-founder.

In exchange, Mr. Sonara was able to make some apartments wider, he said, though he also assigned some of the extra square footage to the condo’s beguiling entryway, to keep with the spirit of the block.

Image

A rendering of 22 Bond’s lobby featuring works by artists like Roy Nachum.CreditBLKHaus and Richport Group

Similarly, the building, designed by BKSK Architects, will feature a 13-foot-long sculpture of a fly, made of parts salvaged from Jet Skis and boats. The work, by Federico Uribe, will be mounted on a wall near the roof and will be visible for a few blocks.

“We would be doing a tremendous disservice to the opportunity that lay before us, to not consider the history of this street,” Mr. Sonara said.

Inside the six three-bedroom units, some of whose ceiling heights will soar to 22 feet, art will also likely feature prominently. Every wall will be reinforced with plywood, so paintings can be hung anywhere and not just at certain sturdy points.

The project began sales in December, for about $3,000 a square foot, or starting at $9.8 million for the smallest 3,000-square-foot unit, said Tom Rosen, Richport’s other founder. The building is to open this spring.

Landmark designation in NoHo means that most of the Beaux-Arts and Romanesque edifices in the area are, in effect, off-limits to ground-up development. Residential co-ops occupy many existing structures. But thanks to sites with parking lots or fix-it garages, builders have shouldered their way in.

A parking lot at 688 Broadway has given way to 1 Great Jones Alley, a 16-unit condo. Cars used to also park at Mr. Shnay’s co-op at 10 Bond Street, which sold out last summer at average prices of $2,600 a square foot.

And another former garage at 11 Great Jones Street is now a luxury rental. Others have had to make do with conversions: 37 Great Jones, which was a television company warehouse, is now a five-unit rental, while 41 Great Jones, once home to hat manufacturers, is on its way to becoming a three-unit condo.